MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons (was: [ mh-e-Bugs-1452715 ] Update icons)

MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons (was: [ mh-e-Bugs-1452715 ] Update icons)

[Reiner Steib]

[ Adding ding@gnus.
  See http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.mh-e.devel/12017 ]
  and http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.mh-e.devel/12021 for the
  tool bar screen shots ]

On Mon, Mar 20 2006, Bill Wohler wrote:

> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
[...]
>> In Gnus' message tool bar the usual editing icons are placed before
>> (left to) the mail related icons.
>
> Maybe you should change ;-). All GUI mailers I've ever seen have the
> Send button first. Consider Thunderbird and Evolution 

Thunderbird doesn't include the "standard editing" icons as message
mode does.  But Evolution does include them.

In message mode, I think that <Send Message>, <Postpone Message> and
probably also <Kill Message> should be one group of icons.

I'd like to argue that message keeps the usual Emacs icons in place,
but since we zap most of the icons that's not true. ;-) Maybe the
order (Emacs icons on the left, message icons on the right) was not a
design decision, but simply slightly easier to implement.

BTW, Emacs' `tool-bar.el' (and `message.el') doesn't use
`kill-region', `yank', ... but the wrapper functions `clipboard-*'
from `menu-bar.el': (lookup-key menu-bar-edit-menu [cut]).  I'm nor
sure in which scenario (or on which platform) this is important.

> (which is pretty close to Outbreak, as I recall):

Even for usability, I doubt that Outlook should be our role model. ;-)

> I do think I should try your separator, and I think after reviewing
> Evolution's layout, I might consider moving the Save and Delete icons in
> front of the Attach icon.
>
> I'm open to suggestions on the icon order. What's the consensus?

[...]
>> You use "left", "right" and "page-down".  How about next-page.xpm
>> instead of page-down?
>
> I thought about it, especially since it would mean that we would have
> one less icon to maintain. I didn't in the end because next-page is
> usually associated to going to a new physical page, while we're only
> scrolling down a single, large page. 

A new page in a book is quite similar to a new "screen" (from the
Emacs tutorial: C-v (View next screen)).  In Gnus the command bound to
the next-page icons is even called `gnus-summary-next-page' (also
bound to SPC, <menu-bar> <Gnus> <Scroll article> <Page forward>), so I
think the analogy is quite good in Gnus, IMHO.

> However, I'm willing to roll with the consensus. If others don't
> think that the next-page icon would be too weird for paging down
> (`SPC' (`mh-page-msg')), then I'd be game for going with the
> standard icon. Please let me know.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
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      (o o)
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Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons (was: [ mh-e-Bugs-1452715 ] Update icons)

[Bill Wohler]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

> In message mode, I think that <Send Message>, <Postpone Message> and
> probably also <Kill Message> should be one group of icons.

Agreed. I alluded into looking into adding separators in MH-E.

> BTW, Emacs' `tool-bar.el' (and `message.el') doesn't use
> `kill-region', `yank', ... but the wrapper functions `clipboard-*'
> from `menu-bar.el': (lookup-key menu-bar-edit-menu [cut]).  I'm nor
> sure in which scenario (or on which platform) this is important.

Thanks for the info.

> > (which is pretty close to Outbreak, as I recall):
> 
> Even for usability, I doubt that Outlook should be our role model. ;-)

Yup. I typically use Look Out as an anti-pattern myself, especially for
standard conformance, but also for usability.

-- 
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Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Bill Wohler]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 920 bytes --]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

> BTW, Emacs' `tool-bar.el' (and `message.el') doesn't use
> `kill-region', `yank', ... but the wrapper functions `clipboard-*'
> from `menu-bar.el': (lookup-key menu-bar-edit-menu [cut]).  I'm nor
> sure in which scenario (or on which platform) this is important.

Note that on my system, (lookup-key menu-bar-edit-menu [paste]) returns
x-clipboard-yank. However, while it would be nice to use the same
function that tool-bar.el uses to obtain the appropriate function from
menu-bar.el, our tool bar code (currently) only entertains symbols. So
for now, I'm using clipboard-kill-region, clipboard-kill-ring-save, and
clipboard-yank.

> > I think I should try your separator...

Hmmm, the separator in the GNOME tool bars looks a lot better. I
modified your separator to look more like the GNOME separator. Do you
mind if I check in my version of separator.xpm?

Yours:


[-- Attachment #2: Gnus separator --]
[-- Type: image/jpeg, Size: 6288 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 25 bytes --]


Mine (based on GNOME):


[-- Attachment #4: GNOME separator --]
[-- Type: image/jpeg, Size: 6354 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #5: Type: text/plain, Size: 387 bytes --]


> >> You use "left", "right" and "page-down".  How about next-page.xpm
> >> instead of page-down?

OK, I haven't heard any objections, so I'm going to use next-page and
delete page-down.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
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Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Reiner Steib]

On Wed, Mar 22 2006, Bill Wohler wrote:

> Hmmm, the separator in the GNOME tool bars looks a lot better. I
> modified your separator to look more like the GNOME separator. Do you
> mind if I check in my version of separator.xpm?

No.  But maybe you could post your separator.xpm, so I can see how it
looks like in Gnus.

BTW, on your screen shot[1], I looks like you didn't set ":enable
nil":

  ;; The dummy `gmm-ignore', see `gmm-tool-bar-item'
  ;; widget.  Suppress tooltip by adding `:enable nil'.

Bye, Reiner.

[1] Wouldn't PNG be more suitable than JPEG for posting small screen shots?
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Bill Wohler]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 387 bytes --]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 22 2006, Bill Wohler wrote:
> 
> > Hmmm, the separator in the GNOME tool bars looks a lot better. I
> > modified your separator to look more like the GNOME separator. Do you
> > mind if I check in my version of separator.xpm?
> 
> No.  But maybe you could post your separator.xpm, so I can see how it
> looks like in Gnus.


[-- Attachment #2: Separator --]
[-- Type: image/x-xpmi, Size: 243 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 902 bytes --]


> BTW, on your screen shot[1], I looks like you didn't set ":enable
> nil":

Right. Check out mh-tool-bar.el. I had added "nil" to its
mh-tool-bar-define entry, but it didn't seem to take. I've asked Satyaki
if he could take a look into it.

> [1] Wouldn't PNG be more suitable than JPEG for posting small screen shots?

Probably. It's just habit. If I knew that PNG was less lossy, more
compressed, and could be read by *all* systems, I'd probably use it
more, but I haven't read such an analysis yet. Do you know how it fares
against JPG? PNG *is* a compressed, lossy format, isn't it? Or is it not
lossy and better to compare against GIF?

I do know that IE has some problems with transparent PNGs.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.

Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 09:14:17 -0800, Bill wrote:

> PNG *is* a compressed, lossy format, isn't it? Or is it not lossy
> and better to compare against GIF?

PNG is not lossy. One can think of PNG as GIF done right.

> I do know that IE has some problems with transparent PNGs.

Yes, Microsoft Internet Explorer only understands 1-bit transparancy
in indexed PNGs - which undermines much of the point of PNG: a free,
good GIF-replacement.


  Best regards,

-- 
 "You know, if the sun was an oboe, what would you do?"       Adam Sjøgren
                                                         asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Bill Wohler]

Adam Sjøgren <asjo@koldfront.dk> wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 09:14:17 -0800, Bill wrote:
> 
> > PNG *is* a compressed, lossy format, isn't it? Or is it not lossy
> > and better to compare against GIF?
> 
> PNG is not lossy. One can think of PNG as GIF done right.

Thanks for the info.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
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Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Bill Wohler]

After talking with the GNOME usability folks, I found out that the old
GNOME arrow (and other) icons used green and this is what GTK is using.
The reason we still see green arrows in our GNOME apps is because of a
bug whereby the GNOME icons have different names from the GTK icons and
are therefore not overriding them. This has been fixed in GNOME 2.15 (so
I guess we'd see it in GNOME 2.16).

So, for this release of Emacs, and until 2.16 is in wide release, I'd
suggest we stick with the GTK-themed icons (with the green arrows),
which you can browse at

  http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/gtk/stock-icons/

or check out with

 cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome co gtk+/gtk/stock-icons

Comparing these icons with the current Emacs icons, I see the following
discrepancies in which the GTK version should be used.

- I'll revert my blue right-arrow and left-arrow icons back to the green
  GTK versions. The refresh icon also needs to be reverted to the green
  GTK version from the blue GNOME version.

- sort-ascending and sort-descending are diagonal in Emacs (and GNOME),
  but vertical in GTK.

- info is a question mark in Emacs, but a blue i symbol in GTK. The
  dialog-info icon is a lightbulb in GNOME, but some themes have both so
  I'm not sure we can compare here.

- search-replace is similar to but different to gtk-find-and-replace and
  different again to GNOME's search-and-replace.

If that works for everyone, I'll float the suggested replaces (along
with the above explanation) to emacs-devel before making the updates.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
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Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Reiner Steib]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 629 bytes --]

On Wed, Mar 22 2006, Bill Wohler wrote:

[ Sorry for the late reply. ]

> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 22 2006, Bill Wohler wrote:
>> > Hmmm, the separator in the GNOME tool bars looks a lot better. I
>> > modified your separator to look more like the GNOME separator. Do you
>> > mind if I check in my version of separator.xpm?
>> 
>> No.  But maybe you could post your separator.xpm, so I can see how it
>> looks like in Gnus.
> [2. Separator --- image/x-xpmi; separator.xpm]

Here's a screen shot with the new (upper toolbar; from Emacs CVS) and
the old (lower; Gnus, AUCTeX) separator.xpm:


[-- Attachment #2: new vs. old separator.xpm --]
[-- Type: image/png, Size: 14925 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 263 bytes --]


I don't have a strong opinion on this (and nobody else neither since
there have been no comments), so I'll use Bill's image from Emacs CVS
in Gnus.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: MH-E and Gnus tool bar icons

[Bill Wohler]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

> I don't have a strong opinion on this (and nobody else neither since
> there have been no comments), so I'll use Bill's [separator] image
> from Emacs CVS in Gnus.

Thanks for the feedback.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
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